The next president of the United States, Barack Obama, officially has announced a campaign rally for Sunday evening at UC's Nippert Stadium. Gates open at 6 p.m., and he's scheduled to speak at 9. Check out the Obama web site for details.

It's fitting that he makes his final area appearance of the campaign on the UC campus, where he held such a stirring rally in February before the Ohio primary.

If you have time, do yourself a favor and go see Obama live tomorrow. Then help him win the election on Tuesday.

If you're still undecided, check out CityBeat's endorsement of Obama here.

U.S. Rep. Tom Massie, the congressman who represents the Kentucky side of the Cincinnati metropolitan area, used his first day in Congress to file a bill that would erase a 23-year-old federal ban that makes it a crime to carry guns near schools.

At the moment, Massie does not have any co-sponsors signed up. Details are sparse because the government printing office says it does not yet have the full text of the measure to put online.

The existing Gun-Free School Act of 1990, which was adopted when former president George H.W. Bush, a Republican, was in the White House is viewablehere. The bill was amended in 1995. As late as 1999, the National Rifle Association (NRA) was testifying in support of the measure, a position it seems to have dropped after the Sandy Hook massacre.

Under the existing law, so-called “school zones” include but are not
limited to parks, sidewalks, roads and highways within 1,000 feet of the
property line of a public or private elementary, middle or high school.
The law makes it practically impossible to travel in populated areas
without entering a "gun-free school zone." People with state-issued
licenses or permits to carry guns are exempted by the federal law, but
the exemption is only good in the state that issued the permit.

The law doesn’t exempt out-of-state travelers who have permits, nor does
it allow off-duty police officers to pack a weapon in a school. And it
is a violation for anyone other than an on-duty police officer or a
school security guard to discharge a firearm in a school zone for any
reason. A state permit does not exempt a person from the discharge
prohibition.

Here
is a copy of the bill that retired U.S. Rep. Ron Paul introduced while
the Texan was campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination. He called
his repeal measure the Citizen Protection Act, and he got no support from
co-sponsors. Paul’s bill died when the new Congress was sworn in
yesterday, but Massie is now resurrecting it.

Massie is a tea party adherent — elected last fall to
replace Geoff Davis — who largely shares the political philosophies of Paul and his son, Sen. Rand Paul, who is also from Kentucky. Massie voted
against John Boehner for speaker on the opening day of the 113th
Congress, an act of open defiance against the Republican House leadership.

A longtime campaign consultant has decided to jump into politics himself. Jeff Cramerding announced today that he will seek the Democratic nomination to run for Hamilton County treasurer next year.

Cramerding, 38, of Price Hill, is a local attorney who has served as a consultant to numerous area politicians, mostly Democrats and Charterites. They include Denise Driehaus, David Pepper, Jody Luebbers and Chris Bortz.

Butler County Sheriff
Richard K. Jones announced that he is in favor of altering Ohio’s
law to make cruelty to animals a felony offense rather than a second degree
misdemeanor. As it stands, animal cruelty in Ohio is punishable by 90 days in
jail at most.

Jones took over the official
duties of dog warden on Sept. 29, when the Butler County Dog warden’s office
and the sheriff’s office joined together. A recent case involving an
emaciated and abandoned white pit bull in Middletown pushed Jones to call
for tougher animal cruelty laws.

Demonstrators
outside of the courtroom displayed their discontent toward the
leniency of the current law. Jones agrees that the maximum of 90 days in jail
is not enough of a penalty for those who abuse and neglect pets dependent on
them.

The sheriff is supporting
HB 274, currently under consideration. If HB 274 passes, it will make animal
cruelty a fifth-degree felony to torture, injure or kill a companion animal or
deprive it of water, food or shelter. Those convicted could receive six months
to a year in jail, bringing Ohio’s law up to par with that of other states.
A letter about the issue was sent on Tuesday to Ohio legislators, with copies to the Buckeye
State Sheriffs’ Association and the Public Animal Welfare Society (PAWS).

Upset about his low pay and dismal working conditions, a worker at one of Facebook’s Third World contractors has leaked the social media site’s ultra-secret document about what type of content it censors.

Amine Derkaoui, a 21-year-old Moroccan man, worked for an outsourcing firm last year that scanned Facebook members’ pages for banned content. Given Facebook’s profitability, Derkaoui became angry about its stinginess with workers.

Some of the forbidden items are obvious like racial slurs, depictions of human or animal mutilation, photographs or cartoons of sexual activity, violent speech and content that organizes or promotes illegal activity.

But some of the other verboten items are more unusual, if not downright strange.

Also, most depictions of bodily fluids are unacceptable, but not all. It lists “urine, feces, vomit, semen, pus and ear wax" as unacceptable (yes, ear wax). But, it helpfully notes, “cartoon feces, urine and spit are OK; real and cartoon snot is OK.” Well, that's good to know.

Other items subject to deletion include cartoon nudity, images of internal organs, bones, muscles, tendons and “deep flesh wounds,” along with “blatant (obvious) depiction of camel toes and moose knuckles.” (Confession: I had to Google “moose knuckle” to know what that meant.)

Images of “crushed heads, limbs, etc. are OK,” however, as long as “no insides are showing” and the person posting them doesn’t express delight or gratification.

Moreover, all criticism of Ataturk, the founder of the nation of Turkey, along with images depicting the burning of Turkish flags are forbidden. It’s believed this restriction is due to certain European laws that, if violated, could cause the site to be blocked in Turkey.

The 17-page manual includes a one-page “cheat sheet” so workers can quickly reference it when making decisions about what to delete.

Gawker said Derkaoui found his job through the outsourcing firm oDesk, which provides content moderation services for Facebook and Google. About 50 people across the globe — mostly in Turkey, the Philippines, Mexico and India — work to moderate Facebook content. They work from home in four-hour shifts and earn $1 per hour plus commissions.

"It's humiliating. They are just exploiting the Third World," Derkaoui told Gawker.

Governor makes offensive remark when GOP trails among women voters

At a Romney-Ryan rally near Cincinnati yesterday, Gov.
John Kasich made some remarks women voters might find offensive. When
describing what his wife and the wives of Mitt Romney, Rep. Paul Ryan and Sen. Rob Portman are
doing as the men attend political rallies, Kasich told Romney supporters the women are “at
home doing the laundry.”

The full quote: “It’s not easy to be a spouse of an
elected official. You know, they’re at home doing the laundry and doing
so many things while we’re up here on the stage getting a little bit of
applause, right? They don’t often share in it.”

The comments were quickly picked up by liberal blog Plunderbund, which criticized Kasich's history with women.

While the comment may be true (CityBeat could not
confirm if Karen Kasich was doing laundry while Kasich was speaking), it
does little for a political party already struggling with women voters.
In the latest poll from Public Policy Polling, Romney was down 10
points to Obama among women voters in Ohio. This is often attributed to
what Democrats labeled a “war on women” by Republicans to diminish
contraceptive and abortion rights. CityBeat previously covered the local and national political issues regarding women here.

Kasich had problems with public speaking in the past. In his 2012 State of the State speech, which The Hill
labeled “bizarre,” Kasich repeatedly mentioned his “hot wife,” imitated
a Parkinson’s patient and referred to Californians as “wackadoodles.”
In a previous statement, Kasich said he would run over opponents with a
bus. “If you’re not on the bus, we will run over you with the bus,” he
told lobbyists. “And I’m not kidding.”

Fast food conglomerate McDonald's isn't exactly known for its do-goodery for asses or animals. Despite the chain's greatest efforts, they just can't seem to catch a stroke of good PR. Just look at what happened when they launched their Twitter campaign, #McDstories, which ended up backfiring so severely that it's become the laughing stock of the professional PR world.

It's hard to feel too bad about their misfortune; they've done a pretty good job of creating controversy for themselves without any help, including their kind of hilarious, brazen ad released in France featuring a gay teenager (video below), the leak to the public that their "vegetarian" fries were actually fried in beef fat and, perhaps most notably, their bad rap for using suppliers with disregard for animal welfare. The list goes on. Remember the McRib story released last November? News broke that McDonald's pork supplier, Smithfield Foods, was subjecting pigs to excruciating pain and mistreatment. The news didn't exactly come as a surprise, but consumers took it seriously when the Humane Society filed a lawsuit against Smithfield.

Regardless, it seems McDonald's realizes its bad press is its greatest weakness, and they've made some solid efforts to improve. Most recently, the chain announced it would be requiring pork suppliers such as Smithfield to phase out gestation stalls — pig-sized cages where pigs are confined, unable to move around or sometimes stand up. Their plan has some strong supporters, including the Humane Society. However, the plan hasn't set a deadline requirement; that means it could several years of red tape and stalling before any real progress is made.

Interestingly, frequent McRib eaters probably aren't generally the type to be concerned about whether or not the pig they're eating got to stand up during its last days. Perhaps McDonald's is interested in expanding its already massive consumer pool to include more meat-eaters concerned about the sources of their food. Or perhaps they've realized that it's feasible to treat animals even a little more humanely and still make a stupendous profits. Is it possible?

New rule will ease recycling process for many

Environmental nerds unite! In the past, recycling a plastic bottle has always required an extra step that sometimes-recyclers might not have known about; plastic bottle lids, such as those from pop or juice bottles, couldn't be recycled through traditional single-stream recycling. Rumpke Recycling sent out a press release Tuesday announcing that they'll now accept those lids as long as they're screwed onto the bottle.

Lids on plastic bottles haven't been accepted by Rumpke Recycling in the past because the bottles' manufacturers simply hadn't found a use for the plastic. Molly Yeager, Corporate Communication Coordinator for Rumpke Recycling, says they're always searching for manufacturers that work to find new uses for their products post-use. "People have been asking about recycling plastic lids for a long time," says Yeager. "It's going to be really exciting to tell them that they can now."

Before, a plastic lid tossed in a recycling bin would have to be manually sorted out and thrown in the trash. Now, manufactures that purchase plastic bottles from Rumpke will be converting the lids into new items, such as paint cans.

Here's what Rumpke says to do with your plastic bottles and lids: To ensure your plastic lids are recycled, follow these easy steps:
1. Empty the bottle. Bottles still containing liquid will not be recycled.
2. If possible, crush the bottle. Crushing the bottle helps remove any
air from the container, which serves as a safety precaution when the
bottles are baled and also helps bottles travel through the recycling
process more efficiently.
3. Screw the lid back on the bottle. Detached lids may not be recovered. Wondering what else you can and can't recycle in your community? Click here.

Cincinnati's only remaining daily newspaper is considering moving its printing operation to Columbus and reducing the size of its print publication.

The corporate owners of The Enquirer and The Columbus Dispatch have signed a letter of intent to have the Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky editions of the local paper printed at The Dispatch's production facility. If the deal is finalized, the switch would occur in the final quarter of 2012.